Detroit forward Charlie Villanueva, responding to Sacramento guard Isaiah Thomas' calling him a "dirty player" after Villanueva was fined $25,000 for a flagrant 2 foul on Thomas: "Dirty player? Not at all. He saw an open lane, I tried to block the ball and he's 4 foot 11, 100 pounds wet, so he looks bad. I'm not a dirty player. . . . I know a lot of people that would testify to that."

Yes, he was joking

Brooklyn interim Coach P.J. Carlesimo, giving a tongue-in-cheek response when asked if would give the Nets permission to speak with Jeff Van Gundy about the permanent job: "No. I told [owner] Mikhail [Prokhorov] in no uncertain terms I don't want him talking to anybody. Especially Jeff. That's a personal thing. It's not a comment on his coaching abilities, it's a personal dislike."

Do what you want

Brooklyn forward Andray Blatche, on returning to Washington's Verizon Center for the first time since the end of his much-maligned seven-year career with the Wizards: "To be honest with you, they can boo as loud as they want. They [sic] supposed to now because I don't play for them, so that's not going to affect me at all."

Getting ahead of himself

Boston Coach Doc Rivers, on rookie Fab Melo's suffering a concussion when he bumped his head on the doorway of his hotel room: "I think, what did you have? Manny being Manny? Five years when Fab's playing terrific for us here, we're going to have some Fab being Fab moments. He just took kind of a head start. . . . Literally."